At 04:33 PM 9/6/97 -0400, Vigdor Schreibman wrote:
>On Sat, 6 Sep 1997, madeline wrote:
>
> Together,
>> among other things, we will decide on the best means for meeting our "CN
>> Movement"'s online information and communication needs, and how to fund
>> these means, so the resources are kept _current_, and relevant.
>
> It is entirely premature to advance the idea that someone has been
> designated, in a legitimate way, to decide on "the best means for
> meeting our "CN Movement's" online information and communications
> needs."
>
> Before a viable strategy can be considered there must be a serious
> shared notion of what those needs are, or what the so-called "CN
> Movement" should do to sustain the communities they purportedly
> seek to serve. That knowledge has not been forthcoming from the
> networking community, the attempted dialogue having failed
> to produce any serious engagement on the topic.

That is a neat shift of the subject under discussion. If we HAD an
Association for Community Networking, the question of what the constituent
CNs should be doing would be [and one day may well be] a valid and valuable
subject of discussion. But since we DO have some CNs and are valiantly
trying to FORM such an association, the needs of the CNs for information
from the AFCN is certainly a timely topic.

>
> It appears to me that what is needed at this time is to go beyond
> the networking community, which we have now seen is mearly means-
> centered, to the people themselves who are using the networks.
> There we may better determine what the community inhabitants
> want their communities and the American society to be, and how the
> electronic networks can serve such goals.

A valuable activity for the AFCN, if and when it is formed. To interrupt
the activity of forming the AFCN to perform this activity NOW seems very
much like a red herring at this time.

>
> Building new entities such as AFCN is clearly not what is needed.
> It is the work of building genuine community that is at issue,
> and that work remains to be defined. Moreover, the work of
> building community has a lot to do with process, in which the
> network community appears to be sorely deficient. This suggests
> that the advocates of AFCN are not the most likely resource upon
> which to rely for genuine achievement of community needs.
>

Ah! But the building of "new entities such as AFCN" is clearly just
exactly what IS needed at this time. It is especially needed if there are
communities already genuinely formed [and there are] who want and belive
[and they do] that they need [and they do] help in forming networks. The
work of building genuine community is NOT at issue, many genuine
communities already exist, even if without the benefit of some magic
"process" which remains to be defined.